


Walking Far From Home

by TaleWorthTelling



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Intimacy, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam’s relationship with birds starts early and inexplicably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking Far From Home

**Author's Note:**

> So I don’t know what this is, but even though I LOVE MCU!Sam (seriously, I was so excited about him and he turned out perfect and I’m still just as in love), a small part of me has a need for MCU!Sam who just stops and talks to birds. It’s sort of his thing in 616 and I missed it. Also there’s other stuff. Sam, as usual, is the only person with his shit together, but he got there the hard way.  
> Title from Iron & Wine.

Sam can talk to birds. He doesn’t advertise this fact, but he came to terms with the truth of it a long time ago and hasn’t looked back since. There’s nothing radioactive or accidental or alien about it. He thinks it’s spiritual. His grandmother used to say he was like the sparrows, a skinny little thing flapping around anyway, paying no mind to how it looked, but he’d passed his awkward phase rather faster than most. He grew up strong and she didn’t call him that anymore. It’s not all birds and not all the time, but every once in a while, after a long stretch of forgetting, a bird or two will look his way, make no mistake about it. They’re staring at him with their little bird eyes, and he thinks they’re seeing more than they ought to. Since, you know, they’re birds. But he has respect for animals, so he smiles at them anyway, because who cares if he’s nice to birds? No one’s going to give him flack about it. He spends half his life in the air; people think it’s funny.

So he doesn’t tell anyone, but he wouldn’t hide it if they asked. He’s reached the point in his life where aliens and myths and technology are all converging on the impossible vortex of why-the-fuck-not. The last thing anyone’ll give a damn about is a guy who talks to birds and thinks they sometimes talk back. Just last month he took down a paramilitary pseudo-government agency with a resurrected Captain America and was yanked right out of the sky by a legendary Cold War assassin who wasn’t supposed to exist.

It’s useful, too, more useful than some of the maps he’s scanned hunting through Europe with Steve. Birds don’t think in the languages that divide people, so he’s always got directions he can understand that are actually up to date – provided he can navigate a birds-eye view. It’s gotten to where he can even avoid traffic without much of a hitch. (The birds tell him where roadwork is being done; they remember because some of the workers feed them, but most of them shoo them away violently.)

Sam’s military experience never took him to Europe (except for very brief, occasional passing through), so he can’t say he’s seen much of it. Steve has, but his experience isn’t much more helpful. The thing that bothers Sam about their journey isn’t really the journey itself (the lousy crash motels, occasionally sketchy but necessary food, the unfortunate characters they have to deal with, the boredom that segues into heart-thumping fear for their lives – or Sam’s fear for both their lives and Steve’s adrenaline-junkie nerves of steel) and it’s not the end goal (see above: legendary Cold War assassin who isn’t supposed to exist). It’s how at ease Steve is with the whole thing. He’s more comfortable on the chase than he was in civilian life; he’s more comfortable abroad on soil where he’d seen and felt unthinkable violence perpetrated than he was at home. It’s easier, Sam thinks, to pretend that home will be there when he gets back. It’s easier when he doesn’t have to face that home doesn’t mean what it used to, so there’s really no home to go back to as far as he can tell.

It’s not healthy. Sam does this for a living, but he could’ve told Steve that anyway. Steve won’t admit it, and Sam hasn’t pressed, but true is true.

Still, Steve’s a grown man and he’ll come around eventually. All Sam can do is be good to himself and hope it catches on. And also follow this next lead to the cliché warehouse on the water he’s seen in a couple hundred movies that ended badly for the heroes. He doesn’t ask the native birds to play lookout for him, but he gets a strong feeling where the danger lays in wait for him anyway.

He’s buying birdseed after this.

* * *

 

Sam was ten when he asked his mom if he could have a parrot. It wasn’t that he liked parrots especially, but when people talked about their birds, that’s what they tended to mention. Any bird was good enough for him. She said no.

He was eleven when he caught a bird living in a tree in the park and took it home. He made a cage all by himself (a pretty sturdy one, too) and scraped up some chore money for bird food and talked for a long time with the nice lady at the pet shop about how to take care of a bird.

His mom was furious. She didn’t yell, but then she never did. She pulled him over to the cage; told him to look that bird in the eye and ask himself whether it looked happy. When he thought about it, well, it did look kind of nervous. He thought they were just getting used to each other. But she was positive. Birds were meant to fly; they were meant to be free and with their own and go where the wind took them. There was science that she laid out for him, books she later made him read, but it was spiritual for her, too. Birds had been a symbol and omen for their family for a long, long time, and they respected animals in this house, Sam, didn’t lock them up for company. “You can’t force someone to live how you think they should just because you think they’ll be better off,” she said, her eyes fierce but her fingers soft on his chin, tilting his face up to hers.

She took him to the park to let it go. It didn’t leave at first, but after a few minutes it took off. Sam was ashamed. It flew in swoops and whirls until it was indistinguishable from the other birds in the sky. His mom squeezed his hand and took him to get ice cream. Then she made him do double his regular chores. For two weeks.

* * *

 

Natasha meets up with them in Paris. They’re not chasing any leads. He’s just always wanted to see it and they’d been nearby when they’d lost the thread and needed to regroup. He’s not sure she’s supposed to have left the country right now, but she couldn’t really care less and he’s not that concerned either. He likes having her around. Or, rather, he likes being around her.

They’re having lunch in a café on a cramped side street. Natasha has done the ordering for everyone. He’s not one hundred perfect sure what he’s eating, but it’s rich and hearty and almost makes him forget what he’s been filling his stomach with for the last month. Almost. Steve eats mechanically, staring moodily at the cobblestones next to their table; he probably hasn’t realized that he’s doing it because he’s not that kind of guy. Sam and Natasha let him be. They talk about the places they’ve seen, memorable people they’ve met in their travels (even the slightly classified ones), books they’ve read. It’s only when he talks about his family that she pulls back a little, reels herself in, and looks wary. She doesn’t shut down, but she’s clearly not sure how to add to the conversation. It’s okay, though; he can hold _both_ sides of the conversation. That’s how strongly he feels about his family.

She warms up pretty quickly listening to him talk with a wide smile on his face. “She really made you take it back?”

“It wanted to be let go,” he says. “She was _mad_. I don’t blame her. She was right, you know. She always was.”

He doesn’t think he sounds sad, but she has a knack for reading people, even when she doesn’t understand what the raw data she collects means, and she must pick up on something. “What happened to her?”

He takes a sip of water to give himself a moment. He’s always surprised by the painful things that he can talk about now without feeling the loss all over again, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop feeling this way for his mother. “She was murdered.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she means it.

“Crazy thing is,” he begins, then corrects himself. He doesn’t like that word and tries not to use it. No such thing as crazy, just people who don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. “I mean, the thing is, I think she would’ve forgiven those kids. I know it.”

“Would you?” She’s not looking at him. She toys with her fork a little, dragging it around the dish. Her eyes are somewhere on the tablecloth. His eyes are on her hands.

He thinks for a moment. He knows what he wants to say, but he won’t lie. “No,” he says finally. He looks up at her. “I should, but I can’t. Can’t do anything about it, though.”

She doesn’t look like she’s going to say anything, but eventually, after a few minutes, she looks up and says, “I understand.”

Steve still isn’t looking at them, but his face has changed; he’s less brooding and more pensive now. He doesn’t look like he’s heard a word. Still, his voice is a soothing rumble that surprises Sam. “Your mother would be proud of you, Sam.”

It’s not a lot, but it warms his chest more than he’d have expected, either because it’s Cap or just because Steve pulled his head away from his stormy thoughts long enough to say it. He manages a half-smile, and they finish their meal in a comfortable silence.

* * *

 

Sam was thirteen when his dad took him to the pier to teach him how to fish. He wasn’t really sure at the time why they went, but it’s a memory he comes back to when he’s feeling alone or down and in need of some comfort.

They didn’t catch a damn thing and still managed to soak themselves in briny New York water for their troubles. They almost caught one fish, but just as it was flopping around on the wooden slats and they were trying to pick it up, wouldn’t you know it, a damn seagull swooped down and took it off their hands. His dad laughed so hard he sprained a muscle and Sam had tears streaming down his face, clutching his stomach like it’d vibrate away.

“I’ve always liked seabirds,” his dad told him on the way home. “You underestimate them, and then they get their timing just right. Curious thing, Sam.”

* * *

 

Steve is unconscious and Natasha’s comm-link has gone out. Sam hauls him out of the tunnel as it fills rapidly with brackish water and gulps in fresh air as he emerges. He dumps him onto the concrete, checks that he’s breathing, turns him onto his side. He’ll be okay, looks like, just took a nasty stunning blow to the head. It’s a little surreal that Sam’s not more concerned about that, but he’s been doing this with Steve for a while now and he’s sure that he’ll be fine. Guy can take a lot of damage. He’ll just need to make sure Steve rests long enough to recover. _That’s_ the hard part.

He’s shivering a little in his wet clothes, thinking about how he’s going to get Steve to the meet up point to find Natasha, when he sees the outline of a man in a dark tree, almost beamed behind his eyes.

“Shit,” he chatters. He goes into overdrive looking for cover and reaching for Steve behind him, but it’s too late; he hears the drop of a body before he registers the report of the gun.

Steve can’t drop twice, though, when he’s already on the ground, and Sam’s sure as hell not down. He cautiously turns around and sees, twenty feet away, a crumpled form under a dense tree.

He can’t see the Winter Soldier from this distance, but he can sense a presence that he’s come to recognize.

An owl hoots from somewhere past the treeline.

* * *

 

Grandma Bea lived in their building and he saw her all the time. He used to spend nights at her place when the thunderstorms spooked him. Somehow it was never as loud when she was around. She’d slip an arm around his shoulders, tell him it wasn’t anything to worry about, and together they’d take on her massive second-hand book collection and try to make a dent. Even when the power went out a few times, she’d light a few candles, hand him the biggest flashlight he’s ever seen to this day, and they’d keep on at it. A lot of them were about nature and animals and science and history. A few more were on tribal cultures and anthropology and philosophy. At least a couple were physics books he didn’t understand even a little. His grandma was a smart woman.

When he had nightmares, like all kids occasionally do, she’d sit up with him and find another book to fill the pulsing silence of city nighttime. He dreamed that he was lost and couldn’t find his way home. He’d never make it and he went in circles until he found the edge of the world and fell off, which was ridiculous because the Earth was round and he knew that. She never let him be embarrassed, shushed all of his stuttered apologies, and turned his face up to hers. She kissed him on the cheek and smoothed her thumb over where her lips had been. The next day she found a book of star charts and memorized it with him. “So that you’ll always know the way home, my little sparrow,” she said.

Kids don’t ever really thank anyone properly, so he’d always regretted never telling her how much that had truly meant to him. He’d thought letting her kiss his forehead was enough.

It’s amazing what you realize when you’re not eight anymore.

* * *

 

Steve is still concussed. He’s acting like he’s fine, but he’s doing a piss-poor job of it and he’s not fooling anyone. They’re in the middle of nowhere in a Finnish forest and it’s cold and Sam’s sore and hungry, so Steve must be. Things had gone all to hell on this one.

Sam is exhausted, though, and Steve’s not getting anywhere in his condition. Sam builds a shelter, dragging branches behind him, leaving furrows in the damp earth. There’s a decent-sized tarp that fold into a small square in his pocket, always saved for situations like this, so now they have a lean-to. It’s hard to convince Steve to sit down, shut up, and stop trying to help, but he finally gets his point across when he pokes Steve hard in the chest and he actually tips over.

Steve nurses his ego quietly for a few minutes after that, but he waits while Sam moves about. He’s not really a fool. He’s just hurting.

Just about the only thing Steve can do sitting down is start the fire, which Sam is hesitant about – him being out of it and all – but Steve is determined. “I’ve done this before,” he says curtly.

“With the trees spinning?”

“Yeah.” And he doesn’t say anything else, but Sam bets it’s a pretty good story.

Once they’ve got a small fire, big as they dare, roaring hot, they sit close together under the tarp. Sam wrings out his clothes and lays most of them a few feet away from the fire to dry. They’ll still be filthy, but at least they won’t be wet. Steve strips more slowly, and how he could work the flint to spark but can’t manipulate his zippers is a mystery to Sam, but he helps him wordlessly and Steve looks grateful, slightly abashed. Concentrating on building the fire had taken a lot out of him.

He’s sitting naked next to an equally nude Captain America in a forest in Europe in the middle of the night, listening to the insects chirp and animals shuffling about off in the distance. It should either be the start of a joke or a porno, but it’s oddly comfortable. Maybe they’re just too exhausted to care. At least it’s not awkward.

He has a small blanket also folded into his gear, about the size of a pack of cards. It’s barely enough for one, let alone two big guys. They huddle together under it anyway, skin to skin, fire crackling gratifyingly. The contact feels good.

Sam eats the protein bars he’d stashed. Steve turns his down. Well, Sam’s not going to mother the guy. He’ll eat eventually. At least he drinks some water.

“We’ll head out first light,” Steve says at last, beginning to slur. He doesn’t look like he’s getting worse, only like he needs his rest. Sam gets up to check if the clothes are dry yet. Maybe if he can get Steve into some warm pants he’ll let himself pass out.

“Agreed,” Sam says as he hands back Steve’s things. He tugs on his own clothes almost as slowly as Steve. He could drop any moment now.

Steve is looking up at the sky and squinting almost irritably. “I think … I think that’s Polaris. We should go that way.”

Sam looks up. He breathes in deep, a calm washing over him as he surveys the night sky with cool air filling his lungs. “Mhmm. That’s the Little Dipper.” It’s too dim for him to really see it properly, but he knows the surrounding stars and he can maybe see it a little. The sky is clearer out here than back home – not the first time he’s had that realization somewhere far away. Steve’s vision is ridiculously impressive, though, even in his current state. Of course he can see that far away. It’s what’s right in front of him that he has trouble with.

“You know the story of Zeus and Callisto?”

Steve turns to him questioningly. He takes that as his answer.

“Hera, Zeus’s wife, caught ‘em together, turned Callisto into a bear,” Sam says with false cheer. He’s tired and rambling, still coming down from a pretty fucked up night, still holding it together but needing a lift. “Her son, too. Arcas. He’s the little bear. Zeus put them in the sky.”

“Sad story,” Steve mumbles. His eyes are drooping.

“Sure is.” And he puts Steve to sleep talking for the next fifteen minutes about the mythology of the constellations and what they represent, because if there’s one thing Sam Wilson knows, it’s the sky, day or night. He’s muttering about Sagittarius when he nods off, the fire burning low to embers.

He wakes up just before dawn with Steve wrapped in his arms, looking peaceful. What do you know, Steve is the little spoon.

* * *

 

When he was sixteen he got his first girlfriend. Well, he doesn’t like to say that he _got_ her; it kind of makes him sound like an asshole. They met, then they started going out, and, actually, she pursued him. Alicia was beautiful, dark and lovely, and she liked to bake and dreamed of being a cosmetologist and doing make-up for the stars. They got along like old friends. Of course, he later realized that she had that effect on everyone: the ability to set anyone at ease and get them to open up. She was the first girl he kissed for real, the first girl whose body he learned with his hands, the first person he made love with, because that’s what it had felt like. He was her first, too.

More important than those firsts was that she was the first person not his family who really made him think. He thought a lot around her. One afternoon they hung out while she baked a bunch of pies for the church. His dad had asked her especially for peach, since that was his favorite, so she made an extra. He helped her knead the dough for the crust and, while it chilled in the fridge waiting to be rolled out and baked, they peeled and chopped up fruit for the filling, sipping coffee they’d recently learned to drink to feel more grown up. It was mostly sugar and milk, but she liked watching the colors blend and he liked watching the motions of her hands as she stirred the cups, smooth and rapid. She spilled a little and sucked it off her long, elegant fingers.

He got a little hard. That happened a lot these days, though, so he ignored it. It was a skill that he’d developed a couple of years ago and perfected since Alicia had started hanging out with him. (His mother and his grandmother and his aunts had sat him down and told him to respect her, respect all women, and that God didn’t care what they did with their bodies, but He sure cared what they did to each other, and she didn’t owe him a thing, and he didn’t owe her, so they better both be happy with what they’re doing. Turns out they had the same talk with her. He loved his family so damn much sometimes, even when they were embarrassing him.)

She noticed anyway when he stood up to get the sugar off of a high shelf for her. She smiled almost shyly, looked over her shoulder as if to make sure they were alone, looked at all the work they still had to do with the pies. Then she hooked a finger through his belt loop almost hesitantly. He leaned down to kiss her, no big deal, not going for any angle, and she pulled him slowly out of the room, down the hall to her bedroom.

After, when they awkwardly got dressed and went back to bake the pies, she talked about her family, how she felt like they didn’t really know her at all sometimes, that they disapproved of a lot of what she did even though she tried so hard, and he felt so damn lucky for his family. He hugged her, told her it was okay when she apologized for being so awkward and needy after sex, for being ridiculous and having horrible timing. Told her that she was important and he’d talk whenever she wanted about whatever.

They stayed friends when they broke up two months later, even though his friends teased him because she dumped him for a girl, but he was okay with it. It made her happy. Life went on.

Anyway, she was pathologically afraid of birds.

* * *

 

Natasha stirs her coffee counter-clockwise in a soothing motion with the occasional, unpredictable jolt in the other direction. She takes it with milk but no sugar, but otherwise she’ll drink expensive brews and three dollar jars of instant alike. Life is too short not to do things that bring you pleasure, she’d said to him, but here her exception is pragmatic. Sometimes you just need coffee.

Sam gets that.

He watches her hands as she stirs. They’re not shaking. They’re trained not to shake. Her fingers remain poised and lovely curling around the spoon, almost distracting from the blood under her fingernails that wouldn’t come out. It’s dyed her cuticles and settled into the corners and no amount of scrubbing really helped. It’ll have to fade on its own.

Time erases quite a bit. Not everything, though. There’s a pull in Sam’s shoulder that’ll testify to that, a grinding reminder of a past that rears its head sometimes. Everyone has one of those. His new friends, though …

Well, their _ghosts_ have baggage.

She hands him a purple oversized coffee mug filled almost to overflowing. He takes his coffee with the scantest sugar possible and no milk, but he’s not picky either. He’d just as soon drink it any which way.

He carefully takes the mug from her stained hands without a word. Instead he gives her a moment to collect her thoughts and looks around unapologetically, taking it in and trying to sort it out. Her apartment is an exercise in contrasts. Parts of it look unlived in, unloved, but then other areas have the cluttered, uncertain feel of someone trying on too much at once. He gets the feeling she’s trying to figure out what she likes, who she is, and the fine dust collecting on porcelain figurines of pale dancers and harsh, cubic abstracts alike tells him that she’s been trying for a long time. There’s a novelty clock with arrows for hands next to a calendar with cartoon bears. The kitchenette is tiny and almost empty but for the percolator on the one half-counter.

Her nails click lightly on her mug in a rhythm he doesn’t think she’s entirely aware of, but the far-off look in her eyes is waning around the edges, so now he speaks.

“You were right. This coffee is better than the sludge I’ve been drinking.”

A small smile curves her mouth; it’s not a delicate look, but not sharp either. “Not your fault. You were used to it.”

Sam laughs. “Yeah, I s’pose so.”

The ceiling creaks, an old floorboard from the apartment above hers, and her shoulders tense for a flash of a moment. Sam notices these things.

He doesn’t comment, though. They’ve been back in the States for two weeks after their failed excursion into Europe and already they’ve had to contend with Hydra’s molding remnants forcing their way into their lives. Natasha’s story is complicated, he’s learning, but the complications all come in hues of red and black and blue. When she asked him to help her infiltrate a trafficking ring he hadn’t hesitated, and that was before she’d explained why this one was personal, why the guy in charge needed to be put down.

He doesn’t like killing even when necessary, doesn’t like the idea of an execution, doesn’t think she really feels any better, but she asked for him, and part of him is still a soldier. Steve would have come with her in a heartbeat, even though Bucky had appeared on his own once they’d returned and Steve was sorting out a lot of stuff, but it seemed to Sam that Natasha didn’t want Steve to see this part of her. She was ashamed. She shouldn’t be, but she was, and the fact that she trusts him with this part of her …

Well, the least he can do is offer some of the books cluttering up his place to fill this space with warmth. He’s already read most of them too many times to count.

She doesn’t tell him about her insecurities and they don’t have sex, but they sit together and she leans her shoulder against his, soaking up his warmth, letting him be a sturdy place to rest. They drink their coffee in comfortable silence and fall asleep sitting up on her couch, still leaning into each other. When he wakes up, well, it turns out that Natasha is the big spoon. He’s good with that, and he falls back to sleep tugging her arm over his chest.

* * *

 

When he was seventeen his grandma Bea died. She was sick for a while and everyone saw it coming but Sam. He tried to be strong for her, didn’t cry at the service or in the weeks after, but there was a hole in his heart that grew into a chasm as he packed up her books with his mom. She looked the other way when he kept more than he really had room for. He’d been holding it together really well, actually, outwardly calm, lending support for everyone’s grieving, until he couldn’t find the book of navigational charts. He lost it. He tore the place up, ripped tape away from recently packed boxes and scattered the contents, stumbled from room to room searching, until finally he fell to the floor and clamped his hands over his eyes and cried and cried, tears dripping all the way down to his elbows and onto the rug. It was dramatic and he felt awful and just didn’t care. There was snot running down his face and his throat hurt and he couldn’t breathe, but that felt right because he felt like he hadn’t been breathing anyway the last few weeks.

His mom crouched down on the floor with him and rubbed circles on his back and let him cry. It felt like it went on forever, but it was only ten minutes or so, and then he swallowed it down, blinked hard, and wiped his face on his sleeve. He hugged his mom as tight as he could, then silently repacked the boxes he’d wrecked.

He didn’t find the book until a few weeks later when they were finally done packing up her apartment. She’d hidden it under her mattress to give to him as a gift, and he cried a little more when he read what she’d written inside. He thought he’d never see it again. He spent the afternoon tracing the charts with his fingers, remembering the sound of her voice as she read the stories to him. When he got up to open the window and air out the stuffy room, trying to let the world in again, there was a damn city hawk perched on the fire escape. He stared with his jaw dropped until it flew away.

He told himself that it hadn’t really been staring right back at him through the window.

When Riley went down, after Sam went back home and met Riley’s family, another damn hawk was perched across the street, watching over the private service.

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, looking thoroughly ashamed of himself. They’re waiting outside while the doctor Bucky’s been seeing checks him out. Steve had wanted to advocate for Bucky, but Bucky wanted to do it alone, so Sam is staying outside with him. “I’ve been awful to be around for a while now and it was selfish. You’ve done so much for me. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Sam says, not one to hold a grudge, least of all against a man who’s grieving – especially a man who’s grieving someone still alive but untouchable nonetheless. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“It’s not okay,” Steve insists. “I don’t know how you’ve put up with me. I haven’t … felt like myself in a while. It’s like I’ve been watching outside my body, doing these obnoxious things, being useless to the people around me … and there was nothing I could do. I was so focused on myself.”

What Steve had focused on was the externalization of his sense of self, which was all wrapped up in Bucky, but Steve didn’t need his counsel right now. What he needed was a friend. “I’ve gone through times like that. You don’t realize the darkness has you until you’re blinking the light outta your eyes on the other side.”

Steve smiles at him. It’s a little sad, a little tired, but it’s genuine. “You remember that forest?”

Sam’s a little taken aback. “Yeah, do you?”

Steve laughs a little, raising his hand to the back of his neck and twitching his lips up in a self-effacing little grin. “I know I was pretty messed up that night. I was wondering, where’d you learn about all that mythology? A lot of it was beautiful.”

“Oh, it’s beautiful, alright,” Sam confirms. He stretches out his legs and slouches a little in his chair. “Crazy as all hell, but beautiful. My grandma taught me how to use the stars, and teaching me the stories helped me remember them better.”

“She sounds amazing.”

“You know, she really was.”

The door opens. Steve looks up too quickly only to see Bucky shuffle out with the same dead eyes and sallow skin he’d gone in with. His shoulders are slumped. It’s obvious that he just wants to go back to Steve’s place and sleep, as much as he wants anything, anyway.

On the way back Sam has a feeling. He turns on the radio to get the traffic, but he already knows what he’ll hear because he’d seen the gridlocked cars from a rooftop, quick as a flash but distinct.

He takes a different route back and saves them forty-five minutes of waiting. Bucky collapses gratefully into bed, one arm around his middle and the other around his head.

There are birds outside chattering, which is weird for this time of day, and Bucky clutches his head harder. He gets migraines, but he doesn’t complain.

Sam tries something new: he projects a little game, hoping the birds will play along and find what he’s looking for.

The birdsong drifts away.

Bucky relaxes.

Sam turns this new information over in his mind.

* * *

 

When Sam lost Riley he came home disillusioned, in a bad place, and very far from himself. He was angry. Why had he suffered so much loss? That’s what he wanted to know. His grandma, his parents, and now his friend – and with Riley, his hope. He didn’t self-destruct or go off the rails, but there were times when he wanted to. He spent a lot of time looking at the sky and reliving the moment when Riley fell out of it. He could feel it all over again every time, so he kept forcing himself to do it, to remember and never forget how horrible it had been, how Riley’s family had greeted him with nothing but love and he had nothing for them but shattered pieces. He looked normal, walking among the living and smiling woodenly. He was trying. He didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to let himself be that person, but he was starting to think that it was outside of his control.

He sat in the park a lot when he performed his daily guilt ritual. He’d feed the birds and look up until his vision filled with dots from staring at the sun. A curious thing happened, though, that he didn’t notice at first. The birds started to fly over him. For a while they squawked and cawed to one another overhead, beating their little wings. He tossed more birdseed, continuing his misery meditation. Eventually, though – and he was pretty sure that no one would believe this, so he kept it to himself – a cloud of birds flew back and forth overhead, doing what appeared to be their level best to block out the sun from view, and, with it, the sky that he tortured himself with.

Birds. Seriously. A flock of birds saved him from himself. It was at that moment that he realized he had to do something. Even nature thought he was screwed up.

He thought back to his Falcon days. He remembered everyone having a good laugh over it, him being attached to a project called Falcon when they all knew about his weakness for birds. Riley had laughed the hardest.

He was ready for help. Well, he was ready to try.

* * *

 

Bucky sleeps a lot, strangely unaffected by nightmares. His serotonin receptors are so numb and damaged that he tends not to dream anything at all. He doesn’t reach that level of sleep very much, his body not knowing how after so many years of chemical aid. He walks around like a zombie not feeling much of anything.

The only reason he was able to function under Hydra’s control was the drugs that they pumped into him, and they don’t know what all of those are, and Bucky’s being difficult about taking the ones they know could help. No one wants to force the issue for obvious reasons, but the least Sam can do is sit with him when he can’t sleep at all. He recognizes a spirit in need. He doesn’t talk if he can help it, so Sam reads to him the books that his grandma had read to him when he was frightened, books of learning and reality and the world around them, not fantasy books. He’s filling in the gaps and feeling out the edges. As Bucky starts to take more of an interest in things he leaves the books with him.

It’s late at night and Bucky’s had something of a backslide. He’s not talking at all and it’s all nightmares all the time, so he’s not sleeping. He sits up against the headboard and glares. He’s ignoring Steve and refusing to acknowledge Sam, so Sam decides to give him space. He goes out onto the tiny back porch to collect his thoughts.

A bird lands on the railing. It’s the same one that’s been following him around the past few weeks, tilting its head curiously at him, and he doesn’t even react except to smile.

“He’ll be okay,” Sam says.

The bird rolls its shoulders irritably.

“I really think so. He just needs time. We could all use some time.”

He’s talking to a bird. Really having a conversation. And he doesn’t give a damn.

The bird hops onto his shoulder and startles him just a little. He looks up at it, grins a little, and cautiously runs his fingers down its feathers. It’s a little scarred in places, battle-worn, but it’s gentle when it nips at his ear.

Well, to hell with it. They’re just going to have to be friends now.

“I assume you know my name. How do you feel about Redwing?”

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently Steve is always a ball of misery and depression when I write him. Sorry about that. I swear, I’m going to write something where he’s happy and not dickish. I can do this.


End file.
